Family Affair: Season 03 (1968)

Member Rating:

For those who dismissed Family Affairduring its first two seasons as just another bland, antiseptic sitcom about an unorthodox extended family--in this instance, bachelor engineer Bill Davis (Brian Keith), his nieces Buffy (Anissa Jones) and Cissy (Kathy Garver), and Bill's veddy proper English butler Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot)--the series' third season would seem to have been designed to emphatically dispel this notion. Though still lighthearted in spirt, Season Three served up several unusally serious episodes, especially for a comedy series of the 1960s, involving such topics as "latch-key" children, the self-denying delusions of an African American youngster from a fatherless family, and the effects of a divorce upon an insecure child of privilege. The most powerful episode of all features a pre-Brady Bunch Eve Plumb as a teminally ill child, for whom the Davises throw an elaborate Christmas party in October--knowing all too well that the child will not live until Christmas. Guest stars this season include Kaye Stevens, appropriately cast as a nightclub singer; Broadway favorite Eddie Hodges as an arrognat British rock star; and Leslie Parrish as a curvaceous young woman who sets her cap for--of all people!--the flabbergasted Mr. French. And this being the 1968-69 TV season, viewers are treated to the obligatory "Hippie" episode, with future M*A*S*H regular Jamie Farr as an overaged flower child! Highlighting this season is Family Affair's only three-part story, in which the Davis family vacations in Sunny Spain--where twins Buffy and Jody promptly get themselves lost. Evidently viewers ate up this enjoyable video confection with a spoon, as indicated by the fact that Family Affair closed its third season as America's fifth most-watched prime time series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi